I’m a Bristolian, brought up in South Bristol. Real Bristol. One of the things I love about my home town is how characterful, tolerant and non-conformist its people are. So I thought Bristol was ready for that picture.

But, boy, was I wrong. We lost thousands of sales of the paper. Which surprised me. Because, on the day, we received just nine phone calls of complaint.

I suspect the answer lies with the fact that older newspaper readers were more socially conservative than the editor realised.

It reminds me of a story I wrote on my first paper about a visitor to an idyllic Sussex market town being racially abused in a pub and forced to leave. I thought the man's account would generate a storm of outrage in the community. The response instead was silence. Asking around I was shocked to realise that casual racism did not appear to be uncommon in that 99 per cent white community of around 15 years ago.